Lait ribot is a traditional fermented milk that has been made in Brittany for thousands of years, dating back to the Gauls. It is in fact fermented babeurre, or bas-beurre (litterally “low-butter”), which is the white liquid that remains after you’ve beaten cream to make butter. Ribotte, besides sounding cute, is an old word for churn, hence the name of the milk (laez ribod in Breton).

Because it was nutritious and cheap, it used to be widely consumed. People would drink it as a snack, or to accompany a meal of potatoes or buckwheat galettes.

It tastes like a pleasantly tart, drinkable yogurt that’s ever-so-slightly sparkling: if you look at the surface, you can see the tiny bubbles. It is similar in taste to the Middle Eastern kefir, which is also produced in Russia and Eastern Europe, and the Central Asian koumys. (Update : it is not like the Russian kwass, as originally written.)

I enjoy it tremendously, and it used to be my drink of choice when we ate at crêperiesin Brittany when I was a child. It was served in a thick-rimmed earthenware bowl, and sipping from this unusual tumbler was as much a part of the pleasure as the fresh, thirst-quenching drink itself.

Lait ribot is somewhat difficult to come by in Paris (kefir is much easier to find), but I’ve occasionally seen bottles of it on display at my cheese store. I don’t own the special bowls to drink it in, but it is still lovely drunk from a glass.

This past Sunday afternoon, we had decided to throw a little surprise birthday party for my dear friend Laurence. This sounded like the perfect occasion to try and recreate my own sticky toffee pudding miracle.

Among the different recipes that I had dug out or that you kindly recommended, my favorite was the one by Jill Dupleix, in part because it involved way way way less butter than the others. While hers called for dates, I knew that Rose Bakery’s sticky toffee pudding was made with apricots, so that’s what I used instead.

The pudding base was very easy to throw together, especially since I used my trusted food processor. I did have a harder time with the toffee sauce : it just wouldn’t caramelize and thicken. I think the thickness problem was that I couldn’t let it get into a full rolling boil, because my saucepan was a tad small, and the sauce, being cream-based, threatened to overflow.

After a while I did manage to let it boil for five minutes without stirring, and it took on the right texture (thick and smooth) and the right taste (toffee, oh my!). It remained cream-colored however, when I was hoping for the same golden brown hue as my role model. I realized afterwards that I used white sugar when the recipe called for brown sugar : when I jotted down the ingredients, I forgot to copy the “brown”… Oh well, here’s something new : albino toffee sauce!

I took the still warm pudding and the sauce to Laurence’s appartment, where I glazed one with the other at the last minute. The designated candle-bearing cake was Ludo and Marie-Laure’s wonderluscious Gâteau Poire Amandine (a pear and almond cake), but I still planted one candle on mine for good luck.

The sticky toffee pudding was then sliced and served. Oh, how delighted with the result I was! It was exactly the sweet taste and moist texture I was trying to achieve. My co-eaters also enjoyed it very much : just like me, none of them had ever tasted anything of the sort.

And since I have acquired a 1kg bag of dried apricots at G.Detou to make this, I am most definitely repeating this very very soon! As a final note, the pudding base is so tasty that it could certainly be served without the sauce, for a lighter and quicker dessert.

Continue reading »

Wine tasting? That is so yesterday, haven’t you heard? Balsamic vinegar tasting is all the rage!

On Saturday afternoon, Maxence and I attended such a tasting, organized by the Bastille Slow Food convivium. It was held at Sur Les Quais, a spice and oil store in the covered area of the Marché d’Aligre. I’ve always been very fond of the taste of balsamic vinegar, but the wildly varying prices of what you find in stores are confusing, so I was delighted for the chance to learn more.

Paul Vautrin, the store owner, started out by telling us about balsamic vinegar and its characteristics. It is produced from the must of very mature Trebbiano grapes and aged in a series of barrels of different sizes and woods. He explained how the producer transfers a fraction of the vinegar from the younger barrels into the older barrels every year, which is why the age of a bottle of vinegar is only an average, being a mix of older and younger vinegars. The types of wood the barrels are made in, the quality of the grapes, the initial concentration, and the producer’s savoir-faire all come into play to make (or break) the quality of a balsamic vinegar.

Naturally, industrial companies started making balsamic vinegar too, aging it in steel tanks, cutting it with water and coloring it with brown sugar or caramel. In response, the original small producers have created a consortium and a D.O.C. (Denominazione di Origine Controllata, if you must know) to protect the century-old tradition : only vinegar produced in a small region around the town of Modena can claim to be the traditional balsamic vinegar of Modena, their products are made following strict rules and are bottled and boxed in a specific way.

The real thing is very pricy (50 euros for 10 cl), but the taste is so intense and concentrated that just a few drops are sufficient. Of course the scope is pretty wide between the real unique nectar and its crappy over-industrial version, so a good dealer should be able to recommend a producer who may not belong to the consortium but still follows the rules, hence producing a quality product at a somewhat lower price.

The actual tasting began with a small glass of saba, the must (unfermented juice) that is used to make balsamic vinegar. Incredibly sweet and sirupy, with a strong grape taste, saba can be diluted in water or wine to make an excellent drink, or poured on ice-cream or fruit for dessert.

Continue reading »

See this? Doesn’t it look just scrumpalicious, nested in its little takeout box? See how the sticky caramel coating has rubbed off a bit on the right side, where the little pudding’s shoulder was leaning, as I carried it home?

I had walked to Rose Bakery for lunch, armed with a magazine and a notebook, my personal treat when I’m home on a weekday. Usually, after I’m done with the yummy and copious lunch (an assortment of their salads, a main dish, a coffee and a cookie), I have to drag myself away from the dessert case and resist buying one of their tempting pastries, because, you know, lunch was indulgence enough.

But this? This just looked too good. And really, with a name like that, who could resist? Try saying it out loud and enjoy the syllables : sti-cky-tof-fee-pud-ding. Then fast, stickytoffeepuddingstickytoffeepuddingstickytoffeepudding. Can you think of a cooler thing to say? I can’t.

Continue reading »